Running head: COLUMBIA YEARS UNTIL 1999

The Life of Neil deGrasse Tyson from His Columbia Years Until 1999
Cheyanne Milliner
Salt Lake Community College

COLUMBIA YEARS UNTIL 1999

Neil deGrasse Tyson chose to go to Harvard University where he majored in physics. He

did many things during college. He was a part of the crew team, wrestling team, and he was also
a ballet, jazz, afro Caribbean and Latin ballroom dancer. Tyson earned his bachelor of physics in
1980 and started his graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1983, he earned his
master of arts in astronomy. Because of his fascination for astronomy, his research was largely
focused on stellar evolution, cosmology, galactic astronomy, as well as stellar formation.
After that, for about a year, Tyson began lecturing astronomy at the University of
Maryland. In 1988, he got accepted at Columbia University to join the astronomy graduate
program. He earned a master of philosophy degree in astrophysics from there in 1989. And also
a doctorate of philosophy in astrophysics in 1991. He was then under direction of Professor R.
Michael Rich who is now at UCLA. Rich was able to get funding to support Tysons research
and for him to travel the world to help him with certain data.
In 1994, while Tyson was a research affiliate in Princeton University, he joined the
Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist. He became the acting director in 1995, and was the
actual director in 1996. He managed the planetariums $210 million reconstruction project as
well. When he was asked about being director of the planetarium, he replied with,
When I was a kid... there were scientists and educators on the staff at the Hayden
Planetarium... who invested their time and energy in my enlightenment... and I've never
forgotten that. And to end up back there as its director, I feel this deep sense of duty that I serve
in the same capacity for people who come through the facility today that others served for me."

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Tyson is a very popular author for astronomy books. In 1995, he wrote the Universe
column for the Natural History Magazine.
Tyson observed using the 0.91 m telescope at an observatory in Chile and he got images
that helped establish Type la supernovae as a standard candle. Part of the papers that he wrote
about his discoveries led to improve measurement of the Hubble constant and also led to the
discovery of dark energy in 1998.

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References

Neil deGrasse Tyson. (2015). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Retrieved from

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1677029/Neil-deGrasse-Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson. (2015). Hayden Planetarium. Retrieved from
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/profile
Neil deGrasse Tyson. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved from
http://www.biography.com/people/neil-degrasse-tyson-20766239